He will be in charge of the core game mechanics and their impact on the world

Apr 3, 2014 09:10 GMT  ·  By

The development team at InXile working on Torment: Tides of Numenera announces that George Ziets is now joining the studio full time in order to become the lead area designer for the upcoming title, after working as a contractor for about one year.

An official announcement on the Kickstarter page states that, “with production starting soon, area creation will become a major focus for our team. We’re in the midst of detailing our plans for area design in Torment (including aspects of pacing, layout, and reactivity). I’ll be making our approach more concrete, establishing standards for our area designers to follow, and then leading the area design team for the remainder of the project.”

George Ziets is best known for his work as a narrative designer and he says that his new role will be similar to that he fulfilled during the creation of Neverwinter Nights II: Mask of the Betrayer.

The developer says that he will be in charge of the overall vision of the game, making sure that players have interesting ways to solve quests, that choices that are made have meaning and influence the world in the long term.

At the same time, Ziets says that he will create, in conjunction with the art team, innovative locations for players to explore, giving the classic corpse of Myrkul from Mask of the Betrayer as an example of what he is aiming for.

The new lead area designer goes on to offer info on the reasons that persuaded him to join the Torment: Tides of Numenera full time.

InXile also talks about the areas of the game that have been created so far, focusing on the Bloom and on the design document associated with it, which is 47,000 words long because of the wealth of content that will be included in the first zone that players will visit.

Ziets adds, “It’s important to us that the content we include in the game is of high quality, and accounting for possible adjustments to the scope helps us keep the quality bar high.”

Torment: Tides of Numenera is a classic role-playing game that was entirely funded through Kickstarter and is set to be launched next year.

The team aims to create a spiritual successor for Planescape: Torment, but the influence will be mostly seen in the core mechanics of the game because the team is using an entirely new fantasy experience.